As Vivo’s boss, said that his Police customer’s “information is very confidential”, they themselves, are releasing their cry to the public that they are running out of fuel supplies to carry out their operations. Indeed, the detail of the confidenciality is that the Police have not paid their fuel dues to the tune of 98 billion shillings.
More so, the Police have failed to pay other suppliers of food and other items. And in a devious manner, they have sought to avoid meeting their commitments by trying to bypass their suppliers and sub-contracting their requirements to their Sacco. Hopefully, the Police will not also bankrupt their own Sacco.
The whole episode is suspicious. They are appealing to the public to “donate” fuel for the operations against the very people who are usually the butt of their pernicious operations. One would be hard-pressed to cite any situation when these “operations” have been favourable to that same public.
Some other criticizers have ridiculed the Police on this score to the effect that they should also ask the public to “supply” them with teargas. The logic here is that the teargas is used against the people. Similarly, the use of the fuel for these operations is against the interests of the public.
So, why is this? If these operations are a security issue, why should the Inspector General of Police, Gen. Kalekezi Kayihura, now run to the public for support?
The normal thing for them to have done would have been, either to go to Parliament for an appropriation in a supplementary budget, or having Parliament cut other ministries’ budgets to supplement the one for Police. It could have been through the claim, as mentioned above, of security secrecy, such that it would not have come to question whether the use would have been for teargas or some other “security” measure.
Other ways the Police would have got more fuel would have been to go to other security agencies, such as the Army, or the Prisons, with whom they carry out some collaborative security duties. Certainly, this would have made better sense than making an appeal to a public that is already very cynical of their support.
There are a number of logical deductions that can be made from Kayihura’s appeal. One is clearly corroborated and contradicted by one of his commanders, the Police Spokesman, Andrew Kaweesi. Kaweesi is categorically saying that “it is not true” that Police is out of fuel.
Rather, it is trying to get close to the public in the districts, by posing that they are broke and have run out of fuel. This is an appeal to the gentler sensibilities of the people to get close to their Police operatives so as to appear that they are reading from the same script. If this is the case, the way Kayihura is packaging it is very amateurish; but it admits one thing: the Police have alienated the very public they are supposed to protect.
By this same argument, a second possible thing is that the Police are helpless and that the people will rescue them. In this way the con act is directed at the Police themselves, who are being asked in a roundabout way to forsake their own food ratios because there is not enough money to feed them.
One can draw a number of possibilities here, where the money saved from such actions will be used. Or, rather, has such money already been used for some other things; and now this is a method of accounting for it?
The other possibility to explain Kayihura’s lack-of-fuel utterances is that; he is facing litigation from his suppliers; and he is trying to appeal to them to suspend their actions while the Police look for a way out to settle the bills. In this way, it is merely an appeal to their biggest fuel supplier; that means that they have run out of excuses which they have previously been giving to them.
Which makes Kaweesi’s contradictory statements both actionable in a law court; and not helpful to himself, should his boss decide that Kaweesi has disobeyed orders by saying that his boss is a liar. How will this Police fuel issue work out?
szumuz@yahoo.com
